Bishop Patrick J. Zurek: What Have We Come To?

The West Texas Catholic: There has been a lot of news these days regarding the issue of life and I want to start our conversation by going back to Austin on Jan. 26 when you attended the state rally for life.
Bishop Patrick J. Zurek: It was a great honor and privilege for me to be invited by the Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops to preside at St. Louis Church, praying that the dignity of human life could be recuperated and sustained. Then I gave the invocation and a presentation on the Right to Life, on the south steps of the Texas Capitol there in Austin.

I based my talk really on two documents, one that is about 50 years old
On Human Life, Humanae Vitae, written by St. Paul VI, in which he warned what a contraceptive mentality would create and
Roe vs. Wade, the legal killing of babies in the womb. In the first one, the document
Humanae Vitae, St. Paul VI warned of human life becoming a commodity that could be bought and sold. Hence human life would lose its inherent dignity as an image of God.
Roe vs. Wade spoke of a “so-called constitutional right” to destroy human life in the womb, the very organ in a woman’s body that is meant to conceive, sustain and prepare the tiny human body to survive outside the mother’s body. In fact, the creative organ becomes the tomb.

I would like to talk more about the Supreme Court Decision, 46 years ago, of
Roe vs. Wade, which allowed abortion to be legal. The court based its decision on a penumbra of the Constitution; to me, that says a lot. It based its decision on the very lightest shadow of the contents of the Constitution, not even the darkest shadow, but on the very lightest. To me that says everything! After a continuous history of a constitutional form of government that existed to protect its citizens, our courts said it was okay to kill another person, to destroy a future citizen. Further, the court used the Constitution upon which all law is based to justify this decision. They did so not on an obvious or clearly discernible clause, or specific statement of the Constitution, but on the reading of the document in a very obscure and vague way. Hence, they found justification on the very
light shadow of its content.

Never has there been lawful justification to kill a certain class or defined group of its citizens in our civilization, except perhaps under tyrants, dictators, or atheist regimes. We have justified, in our history and our own lifetime, other horrific acts, only to realize that we were wrong. For 46 years, we have slowly but quite effectively chipped away at an “abortion on demand” mentality. Today it is more difficult; access to abortion has been truly restricted. Perhaps, just perhaps, our citizenry has come to a noble conclusion—
a right to do something evil simply cannot be a right all.
Never! That simply defies logic.

And then comes New York and its governor, allowing legal abortion until delivery (of the baby). And the Governor of Virginia clarifies that in an interview. A baby can be delivered and we will make sure that the baby is comfortable. Then the mother and the doctor will have a discussion (
a discussion?) to decide if the baby is to live or to be killed.
What have we come to?Where is the moral compass in our country? To some, a border wall is immoral. But the killing of a born child obviously is not immoral for them.
What has happened to us!

In the State of the Union Address on Feb. 5, President Trump spoke against putting an end to Roe vs Wade. Notice which (political) party showed a very strong affirmation of the law. How did they do it? Quite cleverly. Their affirmation of that horrific immoral law was through action—
absolutely no applause. They showed it through posture—
they remained seated. I wonder if we can even be considered a civilization anymore. We have no moral compass. No human dignity is given to a baby even after birth. It is only convenience that seems to be considered. Only the
Me. St. Paul VI warned of this—a human being will become only a commodity.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have much work to do. I spoke of umbra and penumbra. The umbra is the dark shadow of something in the constitution. Much of our country has entered into a darkness of unbelief, absolutely incredible that that they could even think of aborting a child in the womb. Can you imagine the horror of what we have reduced ourselves to, that as a people we would allow a child to be born, then to make it comfortable, then to make a decision whether it should or should not live.
That is darkness!But you and I are light! You and I have the solution to this and we cannot back away. As we have chipped away for 46 years restricting the abortion on demand mandate of some people, and we did it effectively as I said earlier, we now need to chip away at this darkness. The light that is in us because of baptism, the light and the power of the Risen Lord that is in us, the presence of the Holy Spirit
mandates us to bring light to others.

Christ called us before he died (I’m referring to the washing of the feet) to follow his example. St. Paul does that often. In the Gospel of John, chapter 12, Christ says, When I am lifted up, (read lifted up on the cross) I will draw all people to myself. I will draw people into a new unity, of moral living, of hope, of compassion, of kindness, of forgiveness, of giving of self to help the neighbor. Remember the Good Samaritan story. Who is my brother’s keeper? “I am.” And what happened to Cain and Abel? Abel’s blood cried out from the ground and the Lord heard. The blood of our innocents is crying to us for help.
Now is the time to rise up! We need much prayer and actual witness and manifestation, and most concretely to constantly be a people who promote life.